INTERSTATE 3
Guy in the next car’s looking at him. Why’s he staring like that, what’s he think’s so interesting to look at? Some people just like to bug you out, especially from cars and especially from ones going fast on the highway, and this guy, oh God what a mug, mean as hell, written all over it. Pay him no attention, next thing you know he’ll be gone. “Daddy, do you know that man?” Margo says behind him and he says “Why, which man, what’re you talking about?” and she says “Not the driver but the man over there in the next car sitting next to him and looking at us,” and he says “Sitting next to whom, what do you mean?” and she says “Next to the driver of the car beside us, you can see it if you look,” and he says “Pay no attention to him, don’t even look another second at their car, both of you. Maybe he thinks we’re someone he knows and he can’t exactly place us. But we’re not who he thinks we might be, that I’m almost sure of, and I don’t like his face,” and she says “What’s wrong, it’s ugly?” and he says “It’s not that. I’d never not like someone just because he or she was homely or had a physical disfigurement,” and she says “What’s—” and he says “Deformity, and I know you’re going to ask what’s that, so, uh, Jesus — I’m sorry — but gosh almighty sometimes the easiest words come the hardest. Malformation. No. Something wrong with the face, let’s say, if the deformity or disfigurement’s there — a scar here, but a bad one, or a couple of lumps there. A person’s lost an eye, for instance, and just has a socket in his face for one — an eye socket, that’s where the space for the eye is. Or a—” “Oooh,” she says and Julie says “What, Daddy said something disgusting?” and she says “The way he was describing,” and Julie says “What’s describing?” “Saying things. Eye spaces without the eyes. Lumps on faces like big pimples like I once had,” and he says “Describing’s more to make clear by saying what the thing is in a more detailed way, or something, and you never had a big pimple. Harriet — Doctor Harriet said, well, that you were too young for pimples and it had something to do with — and she’s a dermatologist, a skin doctor, besides being a pediatrician, but what’d she say it had something to do with? You often remember those things better than I do, Margo. But not pimples or acne, which you kept insisting your one pimplelike blemish was…blemish, in a way, that’s what disfigurement or deformity, et cetera, is to some extent. A flaw or mark, like a pimple or scar, but on a much grander scale — a big scale, a huge one. Instead of a mark it’s a scar, instead of a blemish or pimple or boil, it’s a huge lamp — lump — where’d I get lamp from? on your cheek or neck — goiters, for instance, which people used to have for ages and when I was younger and maybe some still do.” “It was a pimple I had and I got rid of it with Mommy’s skin cream.” “It wasn’t a pimple and you got rid of it by it just going away.” “What are they, goyas?” she says and he says “Goiters, in the gland, thyroid, the enlargement of that gland — a swelling caused by an iodine deficiency — you know, the lack of this iodine in that gland,” and she says “But iodine’s a poison, Mommy says,” and he says “But you need a small amount of it from natural means — you know, produced in the body, that thyroid gland. If you don’t have it then you get it from artificial — fake, Julie, fake — sources, prescribed by a doctor, or you can get it from using iodinized salt, I think’s the word. Or ionized. No, iondized — one of them, maybe not even that. Iodized, that’s it. I haven’t seen any people around lately with goiters but there was, when I was much younger, this goiter lady where I worked as a waiter. It was at a Schrafft’s — that’s like a, well, it’s not like any restaurant today. In New York. For tea and tiny lunches and mostly frequented by women, but that was during the day. At night, simple dinners — lamb chops with mint jelly, and creamed spinach and apple pie, and known for its ice cream.” “I want to go there next time we’re in New York,” Julie says. “I don’t think there are any more of them, but the ice cream’s still around. It was in my first year of college. Eight to midnight shift. And she came after the dinner crowd left, where we served mostly sodas and sandwiches and snacks. She and her husband, this tall, bald, skinny guy who always wore a suit and vest, came in every night, I’m saying every single night, and took the same four-table. If you’re a couple you’re supposed to take a two-table, one much smaller and for two people, but they always sat at one for four. And sometimes, if that table was taken and all the other fours were, they joined together two two-tables to make a four or added another two-table to the four-table they already had because they were expecting friends, who usually never came but when they did, ordered just as little and stayed as long and were as cheap as the goiter lady and her husband. You have to understand that the manager only assigned the waiter four to five tables for his station, and only one of those was usually a four.” “What’s a four?” Julie says. “Not